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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • The Supreme Court is heavily in favor of “states rights” now, so state politicians know they can cater to special interest groups (for donations of course) with impunity. States are heavily gerrymandered, so they have little risk of losing their position. In some cases, such as book, education, voting, and immigration laws, the goal is to further ensure the states remain Republican in the future (prevent children from growing up “woke,” and prevent immigrants from living there, which tend to vote Dem). Democracy in the U.S. is pretty broken, and is slowly being dismantled further.


  • Yeah, mastodon definitely needs a better algorithm. Algorithms can be designed to promote whatever the maker wants. It doesn’t have to be designed to maximize engagement or the specific kind of engagement that tends to promote crazy conspiracy theories or fascist rhetoric. The algorithm could just be simple collaborative filtering with some randomness thrown in to pop “information bubbles,” which would be much better than what they have now.




  • LOL. I watched that too yesterday. I don’t think the people he talked to were the most reliable narrators though. People have been claiming everyone else doesn’t want to work since the beginning of time :) Some of the people they were complaining about “collecting checks” sounded like they actually were disabled (seizures, anxiety, etc). Regardless, if you feel your choices in life are to work at a gas station for $7/hr and still need government assistance just to survive, or just collect a check, you’re going to choose the check. These people are broken by poverty, and believe they have no hope to lead successful, rewarding lives (which may or may not be true).

    I have family that lived in some of those exact same towns. Sadly, most died very young (in their 20s) ) due to poverty/drugs/shit-life-syndrome.



  • IDK your personal experience, but it’s almost always the pay. Possibly you’re just matching the pay other companies offer, and the industry doesn’t pay much in the U.S. comparable to trades that require equal training, so there aren’t many workers that go into that trade. Or, the labor market is extremely tight for that trade.

    I was in a similar circumstance, and was able to find quality candidates by raising what we were offering considerably (+30-50% above regional average, according to sites like glassdoor). We were able to attract very good employees away from their previous employers this way. But, these were more “professional” jobs, and sounds like you’re looking for “lower-skilled” technicians, which may have different subtleties. Another option is apprenticeship-like arrangements (on-the-job training + paying for technical school), depending on the industry/trade.

    If people don’t care to have work ethic, show up on time, etc, it’s usually because they feel like they’re being shafted, and have horrible, non-inspiring management, so they feel they owe the company nothing. If people feel like they’re working for a company, instead of with a company that’s helping them “self-actualize” or whatever, you get the “companies pay just enough so their workers don’t quit, employees work just hard enough to not get fired,” attitude.


  • Most leftists in the U.S. are democratic socialists, social democrats, are some flavor of anarchists; not authoritarian socialists… Most do not think violence is necessary, except for protection against the increasingly fascist right-wing. Many believe it’s possible to move closer to a socialist-like society by building mutual-aid networks and communities, and promoting candidates for government positions that align with their values; not through a violent revolution.

    And yes, I would prefer systems closer to Scandinavian countries, which the right-wing here calls socialism. Ideally, I would like to see some kind of real socialism where the workers own the means of production (factories, stores, farms, etc) and controls it through democratic processes, not the investor-shareholders or the government. I think the term is anarcho-syndicalism, but I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.


  • I cannot imagine a system that would lead to more freedom, better education or innovation.

    LOL.

    Even though I acknowledge that other systems have been tried in the past, I also believe that all of them, except capitalism with a few social tweaks, have failed.

    Capitalism fails every ~8 years requiring the use of vast amounts of public funds to keep afloat. I’d also say if fails daily if you look at all the needless suffering occuring in the world today, especially in the most “free market” countries and the countries these exploit. We have “socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else,” as Jon Stewart would say.


  • I’ve spent years working at a fossil-fuel-adjacent company, and I’ve noticed that even some intelligent people (consciously or unconsciously) avoid any information that that might make them think they may not being living a perfectly moral life, or information where the obvious solution goes against their “values” (pro-business, free market). They also grasp for any information that affirms their values and lifestyle, no matter how easily discredited the source.

    It’s kinda worrying that it always seems to result in Nazi-like conspiracy theories like “the Agenda,” “Elites,” “groomers,” “cultural marxism,” etc.


  • “Slow” in what way? I, and a few other people have been using it as a replacement to Slack for the past 6 months, and haven’t noticed it being slow. We’re just using the matrix.org server. Only downsides I’ve seen is it doesn’t have all the features Slack does (but I have never used them anyways), and search sucks (which is understandable because it’s encrypted).



  • Twitch takes 50% revenue. Youtube takes 30%. Twitch has an overly strict TOS to stay relatively kid-friendly. Twitch recently tried to limit content creators from showcasing sponsors in their own videos, but I think they backed away from that plan. Basically, it’s at the fully enshittified stage at this point.

    Apparently, there’s a new twitch competitor, Kick, backed by an online gambling company, which I even worse. They have their content creators do gambling streams where the odds are modified to make it look like their games pay out more. And they explicitly promote bigots and fascists on their platform.





  • 80085@lemmy.worldtoFediverse@lemmy.worldWhat should we do about Threads?
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    1 year ago

    Threads doesn’t need to do an EEE attack. They’ve already gained many more users than the entire Fediverse. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to not join the Fediverse at all.

    I would never use Threads, but I would use a Mastodon instance that federated with Threads. I already see many journalists and content creators I like trying it out, who either stopped using Mastadon long ago or never even tried it in the first place. If Threads started doing things that negatively affected my experience, I would then switch to a Mastodon instance that wasn’t federated with Threads.